Products of meat processing

 

Meat is generally eaten cooked, but there are many traditional recipes that call for raw beef, veal or fish. Meat is often spiced or seasoned, as in most sausages.

Meat is a typical base for making sandwiches. Popular varieties of sandwich meat include ham, pork, salami and other sausages, and beef, such as steak, roast beef, corned beef, and pastrami. Meat can also be molded or pressed (common for products that include offal) and canned.

The manufactured meat products can be grouped as follows: cured and pickled, cured and smoked, tenderized fresh, frozen, and canned.

Cured meats are those items which have had combined with them salt, sodium or potassium nitrite. Sugar and spices are optional ingredients.

The salt functions as a preservative while the nitrite and nitrate combine with the meat pigments to form fairly stable coloured compounds.

In the category of cured, smoked and cooked meats is a broad line of sausage products such as frankfurters and bologna, which differ from cured and pickled meats in that they are prepared from finely chopped (or comminuted) meat to which salt, sugar, spices and flavourings have been added. They may also include such items as cereals, milk powders, protein hydrolysates, and other substances.

These products are not pickled since cure penetration is obtained during an extensive mincing or chopping procedure. To secure the low temperatures often necessary for stability during the heating process, suitable amounts of ice are incorporated during the chopping operation. Ice also introduces moisture and thus increases the acceptability of the end product by assuring proper juiciness.

The products are usually heated in the smoke house to approximate internal temperature of 65.6 - 76.7°C. Hardwood smoke is introduced, and the products are smoked for a length of time sufficient to impart the characteristic smoked flavour. This smoking operation further increases stability of the end products by depositing on the surface a certain quantity of bacteriostatic agents.

Tenderized fresh meats include meat products which were dipped in enzyme solution and then were either cooked or frozen. Another tenderizing process involves injecting an enzyme solution into the blood stream of an animal before slaughtering it. Many frozen meats fall into the category of processed meat products. Generally the precooked meat items hold up better in frozen storage if they are covered with gravy.

Practice 1. Re-read the text and answer the questions:

1. Can you name any groups of meat products?

2. Why do manufacturers of meat products use ice?

3. What are the main chemicals used in meat processing?

4. What does the process of tenderizing involve?

Practice 2. Give the Russian equivalents to the word-combinations from the text:

-traditional recipes

-typical base

-cured and pickled meat

-cured and smoked meat

-optional ingredients

-meat pigments

-fairly stable coloured compounds

-broad line

-comminuted) meat

-extensive mincing

-low temperatures

-heating process

-bacteriostatic agents

-smoke house

Practice 3. Match up the words on the left with the definitions on the right:

1. smoke house 2. solution 3. to dip 4. canned 5. to pickle 6. to mince 7. gravy 8. offal

a. preserved and sold in a metal container b. internal organs and entrails of a butchered animal c. to preserve in a vinegar sauce or salty water d. a sauce, made often from the juices that run naturally from meat or vegetables during cooking. e. to put something into a liquid for a short time f. a building where meat or fish is cured with smoke g. to cut up into very small pieces h. a liquid into which something hard has been mixed and has dissolved

 

Practice 4. Complete the sentences using the words from the table:

 

salt heated ingredients internal minced canned spices

 

1. ______ meats are preserved closed by heat sterilization.

2. Cooked meats are always ______.

3. Sausage is prepared from _______ meat with ______ and _____ added.

4. Unfortunately, such _______ as nitrites and nitrates become more and more popular.

5. In the process of smoking ______ temperature of the smokehouse must be constantly controlled.

Practice 5. Complete the table:

noun	verb	adjective
	freeze
		extensive
tenderization
	add
injection